I am looking at Competency based assessments, best practices, what works or doesn’t work? from anyone that has been involved in these.I'd like to also ask opinions and thoughts on should these managed by the L&D function with approved assessors carrying out workplace assessments? Should assessments be delivered through trainers? I’ve thought about approaches such as see one, do one teach one method, or knows, knows how, shows how, does. I’m sure there are many different variations that could be useful for consideration. What have you found that works for you?

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Our CBA model is not electronic as yet, but we have used the CBA system for a few years now. What we have found is that the a small number of individuas can demonstrate competence in any specific task when they are being assessed, however, revert to a different practice when not actively being assessed.

I am in agreement that the assessor's take on the CBA can vary despite robust guidelines and training.

In our CBA self assessment we offer 2 options 1. competent or 2. not competent/need an update. We have found this allows an informal update on tasks that are infequently carried out but still part of an individual's role. The feed back to our Team is that both the assessor and individuals being assessed find this add on (not competent/need and update) beneficial to both.

As we have now had the CBA model for a few years we have realised we need to change model the training for the assessor to incorporate them becoming trainers as well as competency based assessors. This allows them to carrying out these informal teaching sessions with competence and confidence. On the odd occaision when identified they assessor will offer a training update to a small group.

Can the assessments not be completed by job role managers/supervisors? Provide them with suitable assessor training ideally to L&D9i. This means the assessor has an understanding of the job role being assessed and meets best practice assessment criteria of the assessor having worked within the job role within the last 3 years.

This can be overseen by the L&D function. How is assessment evidence going to be recorded? On a CMS? Is the assessment evidence just observational or are work records,Q&A etc also going to be assessed?

Ideally assessments would be carried out by managers depending on experience or field operational specialists.Any assessment evidence can be recorded within an LMS system we are currently in a good position for this as we have an LMS being built at the moment.

The actual assessment itself would ideally be observational with Q&A through the workplace assessment; this can then be mapped against other metrics to give comparisons across the business and an organisational task average (in an ideal world.)

We've had our CMS in place for approx six years (400 users) and its been a work in progress from the start to be honest.. Mainly with changes to the software format so as to reduce workload for the assessor in the recording of assessments. It's a balance between making sure assessment evidence is captured robustly without it just being a tick box exercise (most would prefer this!).

Our assessors have around 5 candidates to assess each and in the early days it was time consuming for the assessor to record on the system. With each observation, Q&A, feedback etc. needing to be captured as evidence on the system.

Are you implementing a verification process? We didn't have this in place on the initial roll out and it proved to be something we regretted. Once we had trained internal verifiers it quickly became apparent that our assessors (despite all having assessor training) had different approaches to how the process should be completed. This meant a number had to resubmit evidence and it went down like a lead balloon. Once internal verification was in place it was the support the system required and kept assessors on track.

I'm now moving to a combined LMS/CMS which is another work in progress but already proving to be advantageous in how we develop and capture our personnels competencies.

There are many variations as you say and it varys from industry to industry but the assessment criteria of progress plan, type of evidence, feedback and verification, don't change.

I'm hoping some of this is helpful for you. Apologies if I'm of track, but so many areas that can be discussed.

Kind regards,

Nathan

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